


Empty Chairs At Empty Tables

by emojin172



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 12:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19791079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emojin172/pseuds/emojin172
Summary: Five is lonely during the apocalypse, and desperate for a friend.





	Empty Chairs At Empty Tables

Oh my friends, don’t ask me  
What your sacrifice was for

Dust. Rubble. Death. The occasional cloud of ash; the silent voices screaming of their pain, their misery. Eyes closed, deep breath. Fists clench, shaky breath. Phantom faces haunt him, his family, his friends. Every time he closes his eyes. He could have saved them if only he’d tried harder, why can’t he try harder, try harder!

Sometimes he finds a dusty bottle of half-filled wine. Not often, but in cellars that he finds after scrounging through the remnants of somebody’s house. Unused now, so they can’t scream at him when he downs the alcohol in a few gulps. His body is old, time is older. He can’t tell how long it’s been like this, only that it feels longer. When he closes his eyes, he imagines their agony. Their last moments. Waves of self-hatred wash over him as if he lived underwater. Sometimes it feels like that. Sometimes the silence is too much to bear and he shouts to the sky to fill the void. He always stops at some point, though. His breath can’t last forever, so he stops, panting, gasping for air and half-wishing for none to come. Still, thoughts of them claw at him, begging him for peace. All he wants is rest, so he shuts his eyes tightly and thinks of happy things. He thinks of times with them when they were alive. He has very few happy memories of them that aren’t tainted. Few memories where they were all genuinely happy. Of course, happiness in his childhood was like finding gold in a warzone. 

Them - all together. Dancing at night. Dad never knew, of course. They were too aware of the consequences of having fun to let the monumental event be anything but watertight. None of them uttered a word about it, but once every month, when Dad told them he was out on ‘important business’ (none of them ever found out what it was, but that was all he ever referred to it as, and they were too young and scared to question it). They would stay silent until half an hour went past after he left. Quiet feet, pitter-pattering through the cold, not quite empty halls. Hushed whispers, invisible grins. Dad’s gramophone clutched carefully between someone’s hands. Music, happy, joyful music, would fill the chilling house. Someone would turn on the lights and someone else would sneak food from the pantry to share in tiny rations. It was the only time they could truly be themselves - without missions, without consequences, without rewards, just _there_. 

Five finds himself opening his eyes to the dust again. Every now and then, he thinks of memories like that and gets a pinprick of feeling. It never ceases to be strange. In the apocalypse, you must be strong. You must be ruthless. You must be numb. Feeling is weakness. Those who feel die. Except Five is the only one left. And he’ll be damned if he dies anytime soon. 

He stumbles to his feet, groaning at the sharp pain in his forehead at the quick movement. He strides forward, ignoring the stiffness in his legs and forcing himself to keep going. Five would say with the utmost confidence that he is the most determined person on the planet. He walks fast, as if there is something to hurry for, perhaps an appointment that he is late to. Somewhere to be, somewhere to go. He takes his minimalist possessions (a book titled _Extraordinary_ filled to the brim with equations, a plastic bottle that is half full and looks questionable in terms of not giving him diarrhoea if he drinks it. Five also happens to have a low-quality toothbrush, but on the rare occasion he finds toothpaste, he would it in tiny amounts and it wouldn’t really be worth using, so there was never much point, really. He only carries it with him for sentimentality, though he will never admit it. Not that there is anybody to admit it to. 

Five has been trapped in this hellhole for a very long time. So much so that the days blend into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. He has no idea how long he’s been here. Only that he will never stop trying to get back. 

He trudges forward, cursing his short legs. He is always travelling. Logic dictates that there must be something somewhere, some indication that the world still has the capacity for holding life. But when he's not travelling, Five calculates. The margins in Vanya's book have all but been filled, and tiny numbers in between each line have made him only more desolate when they don't work. Try as he can, getting back is futile. But Five always was one to do the impossible. Dear old Dad told him that he couldn't travel in time; he travelled. Granted, it was only to the apocalypse, but baby steps. 

There is a small wheelbarrow that he found, rusted in someone’s back garden somewhere. They don’t need it, so it is now two steps to his right. Dumping his things into the wheelbarrow, he takes it with him and continues onward. Time to find a new place to set up camp. He travelled far yesterday, maybe this suburb will have some food or water. His shirt sticks to him, damp with sweat, snot and a few tears. Maybe he should get some new clothes too. 

There aren’t many water sources in the apocalypse. Unfortunately, Five has to compromise with whatever he can find, which isn’t much. Five hasn’t had a shower for a… well, not since he got here. Water is too scarce and valuable to waste it like that. But sometimes he gives his face a wash, wipes away a bit of grime and blood. He would hate to find out how much he stinks right now, as he walks along in a daze for a few kilometres, hunched over his wheelbarrow, looking out for any shops as if he’s merely browsing through a mall. His eyes travel over bricks and bodies and he zeroes in on a semi-destroyed shop. There are a couple of walls that have crumbled down, and Five notices that there are clothes inside. He abandons the wheelbarrow, figuring that nobody is going to take it, and skitters across the messy path to see what he can scavenge. 

Surprisingly, there are choices. Five can’t really remember having choices, even when he was back at the Academy. They just… didn’t happen. Daily life just wound around and around and around like a well-built clock. Breakfast, training, lunch, mission, dinner, a few minutes of recreational time before bed. That was just how it always went. 

Five rummages through the scatter of what used to be a building. His hands are grimy and have retained a brownish colour ever since he got here. Maybe it’s the dust. Thankfully, there aren’t any bodies in this mess and Five doesn’t have to pull out another victim of the apocalypse. He has seen too many. 

He blinks again and heaves out what seems to be a body, but upon closer inspection is actually a mannequin. The dread that Five was expecting is pleasantly replaced with relief, something that he can’t get enough of. He brushes the ash off the body and find the mannequin to be quite well put-together, compared with Five’s battered state. It’s wearing a white shirt with black spots all over. Five doesn’t know a thing about fashion, but it looks good. He decides to take it with him. Who knows, maybe it can be someone for him to talk to. 

_“It” seems a bit too objective, doesn’t it?_ Perhaps Five should give it a name. He doesn’t have many people to talk to. Five wonders for a moment, then speaks its name aloud. “Delores. I shall call you Delores.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I was inspired by a song called Empty Chairs at Empty Tables from Les Mis, sung by Eddie Redmayne. It made me cry. This is a one-shot unless I decide otherwise, and I decided to write it because I’ve been waiting forever for TUA season 2 and ran out of fanfiction to read and was forced to write some myself. Hope you enjoy!


End file.
